I've had a lot on my mind the past couple of days. Even when I do get to sleep I wake up shortly there after with life still spinning around in my head. I find myself staring off into space and then wondering how long I've been there. I need a break, even if just for moment, from some of the lessons life is teaching me.
Tonight I got that break. The timing was perfect. My Man handed me his cell phone and asked me to listen to a message from our sweet friend Jan. That message went something like this....
"Steve, my phone rang just before ten last night and it startled me. I didn't have my glasses on so I just answered it. I'm afraid you 'bottom dialed' me. I could hear you playing with your boys and someone counting in Spanish. I hope you don't mind....but I felt like I was right in the room with your family and I liked it.....so I listened until the phone went dead. That's what you get for 'butt ringing' me."
Jan, I needed that message. I laughed so hard I cried. Then I listened to it again and laughed some more.
But now I've started thinking again.
What did you really hear? Pandemonium probably. What would I think about my family if I randomly listened in? What would I think if I overheard myself "motivating" my girls to finish the dishes for the 15th time? Or my boys during one of their contests of questionable origins? (And what is it with boys and bodily functions, anyway?)
SO since my brain is really turned on for the night I might as well tell you what you would have heard if you had been "rear rung" from our house today.
You would have heard Miss Nichole giggling over how handsome her soon to be husband is. You would have stumbled upon Miss Brianna and Miss Emily trying to get Miss Bella to say their respective names with little success. Then you would have wondered at my parenting skills as Sir Jake got her to say "poop stain" in one try.
Sounds of groans would emanate from the receiver for a large portion of the afternoon because tomorrow is the Boy Scout Court of Honor which means it is finally last minute. That seems to be the signal to my sons that they can now start to schedule appointments with Merit Badge counselors and finish six pages of paperwork.....per merit badge. Maybe that's just me. My gratitude and apologies to anyone working in the Scouting program.
You probably would have hung up around dinner time. We sang the infamous Crisis Center rendition of the Happy Birthday Song. No one should have to endure that on purpose. However, if you had stayed with us you would have been rewarded with a good laugh.
Besides following Miss Izzy around and rapping everything she did, (boom shish climbing on the couch now, boom shish pickin' up the doll ya, boom shish takin' out the hair bow....) Sir James presented Miss Nichole with some doosies. The first was his handmade card. It was a scrap of notebook paper about two inches square with some symbols and letters he had copied. In his mind it read "Happy Birthday!" In reality it looked something like this, /\SS. Birthday Girl smiled politely and kept her card away from the viewing of the above mentioned, still competing, boys.
Sir James then presented her with a tiny tea set plate shaped like a strawberry. "I got this for you. It was in the junk drawer. I washed it." Sometimes I feel like Napoleon Dynamite's mother.
Not everything that entered your ears would have made you scratch your head today. Occasionally I'm proud of the racket that rises to Heaven from our home. If at the end of the day I have a room full of teenagers singing 'I am a Child of God'.....I can find a way to be okay with rest of the hubbub.
